How journalists can save time with data extraction.

October 5, 2016 1 min read

Journalists have a difficult job. They have to do much research, and that takes time. Facts and figures are vital to a story or report. A journalist sometimes has to use facts and figures to create a compelling story. What can help them with this process of collecting facts and figures?

Data Extraction

We live in a fast paced world where everyone wants something yesterday, especially news. Journalists have the daunting task of obtaining that information on a moments notice. It’s not easy. They have to spend time trying to find all this information. Wouldn’t it be easy just to have a database that is filled with all the information, facts, and figures you need?

Media organizations and newspapers can utilize our service by creating “diggers” to scrape data that they need and can scrape that data as often and as much as they want. Journalists will be able to have all this data at their fingertips and will save them time doing research. They will be able to take this extra time for other stories. If we can help eliminate one step for journalists, then that is a win for them and us. Media is a multi-billion dollar industry, and that is how we get our news. If media companies used this approach, they would save millions in dollars and produce more stories in this information age.

In my next blog post, I will give an example of how a journalist can achieve this by using a site and showing the result. Stay tuned!

In the meanwhile you can check interesting resource I discovered recently. Its called KDNuggets and you can find much information on how to get open data datasets there. Must have for any data journalist!